Identity and Revision in Trungpa Rinpoche's Buddhism(S)
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The IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship Volume 2 - Issue 1 - Spring 2013 Translating the Translator: Identity and Revision in Trungpa Rinpoche’s Buddhism(s) Enrique Galván-Álvarez Abstract By exploring how the literal and metaphorical aspects of the teaching/translating activities of Chögyam Trungpa overlap and feed into each other this paper analyses a highly original process of re-inventing tradition against various forms of criticism and censorship, both in the target and the source cultures. This analysis will be articulated along three axes, which correspond to the three Buddhist roles Trungpa was meant to have played: guru (teacher), siddha (accomplished practitioner) and tertön (treasure revealer). The three roles are all concerned with different processes of mediation and, thus, can be thought of as metaphorical translations. Looking at linguistic and cultural translation in terms of those three traditional categories can provide us with a meaningful framework for understanding how Vajrayana Buddhism, and particularly the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, imagines and conceptualises translation. Keywords: Tibetan Buddhism, Translation, Counterculture, Crazy Wisdom, Terma, Tibetan Exile 111 The IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship Volume 2 - Issue 1 - Spring 2013 The histories of Buddhism cannot be fully understood without taking into account the notion of translation, both as a literal act of mediation between languages and as a metaphor for transformation. As a system originating in the Gangetic plains in the sixth century BC, which spread all over South, Central, East and South East Asia and, in the last fifty years, throughout Europe and America, the Buddhist teachings have, naturally, undergone countless translations. These many translations into many different target languages/cultures, along with the somewhat rhizomatic fashion in which Buddhism developed, especially after the rise of the Mahayana in the second century BC, produced the vast array of schools, ideas and practices that we call nowadays Buddhism. Thus, it is not inappropriate to refer to the many forms of Buddhism as Buddhisms, as sometimes applied in Buddhist studies. Moreover, it should not be assumed that each linguistic realm, for example, Tibetan, has a single form of Buddhism or, in other words, that every translation into a new language produced a single new Buddhist school. In this sense, although we might use constructs such as Tibetan or Japanese Buddhism, they should not be understood as referring to acutely defined schools, but as a number of often variegated lineages of transmission that share a common language and cultural background. Therefore, those entrusted to express, spread and pass on the Buddhist teachings play a key role in the fluid development of the many Buddhisms (Williams 2009, p. 1). In this sense, teachers play a role analogous to that of translators, since they re-express ideas in a different context. Furthermore, Buddhist translators are often also teachers, a combination of roles that places such a person in a position to reformulate the tradition to which he or she belongs. For the translator to be an effective translating agent he or she needs to be first a translated subject. By this it is implied that this person will not be a mere mediator between two languages and cultures, but also someone who has actualised the meaning of the teachings that are about to be translated/re-expressed. The translator is meant to be soaked in the teachings, first by studying them thoroughly and then by practising them for a number of years. Such a process of immersion tends to happen in the source language, which the translator needs to have mastered beforehand. Later, this translated subject who has mastered not only the language of the teachings but also their ultimate meaning is expected to re-formulate them in the target language, which in most cases, though not always, corresponds to his or her mother tongue. In this way the translator fulfils a double process of translation: a literal one between two languages and a metaphorical one in terms of his or her mastery of the teachings. This particular conception of the translatorial role, based on the inseparability of Buddhist practice and translation, is particularly relevant to the Tibetan-speaking forms of Buddhism, their history being intimately linked to the histories and stories of those teacher-translators who contributed to the creation of specifically Tibetan forms of Buddhism. Buddhism was transmitted to Tibet in different waves of translations, through which the lotsawas (Tibetan for translator, though literally “eye of the world”) reformulated Indian Tantric Buddhism in a Tibetan context. Most lotsawas were Tibetans who went to India to study Buddhism, stayed there for many years, learnt the languages, received the teachings, gained mastery in their practice and then returned to Tibet to teach and translate them. These was the case for Vairotsana (eighth century) (Jinba, 2004) and Marpa (eleventh century) (Trungpa, 1982), possibly the most important figures in the first and second wave of translations respectively. In fact, the training of a lotsawa is not so different from the making of a teacher (Sanskrit, guru), only that in the case of the former the language and culture in which he receives the teachings and the one in which he expresses them are different. By showing the similarities between the guru role and the training and work of a lotsawa we can appreciate how the latter were not only translating agents but also translated subjects. In fact, 112 The IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship Volume 2 - Issue 1 - Spring 2013 their condition as translated subjects, that is to say, as affected and modified by the teachings, legitimised and validated their translating agency in the way they reformulated the teachings. In Tantric Buddhism the guru plays a central role, perhaps analogous to those who recorded the scriptures in the religions of the Book; Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Like those figures, it is not unusual to find the guru being construed as an embodiment of the teachings, a living symbol of the essence of all Buddhist scriptures. As Rigdzin Shikpo points out, for a student practising at the tantric level, “[t]he teacher becomes the living embodiment of the path and the fruition. The teacher as living inspiration is more important than the teacher as instructor of practical techniques” (2005, p. 229). This particular way of understanding the teacher role places the teacher above the scripture by turning him or her into a living and dynamic text which stands for the ultimate expression of the Buddhist canon. Interestingly enough, this is not only applied to the teacher’s words but to every aspect of his or her life. However, for someone to play such a role it is not enough to be surrounded by a group of followers or students who construe his or her words and actions in the way described above. The teacher needs to undergo a process of training before he or she can claim to embody the teachings. This process includes studying and practising certain cycles of philosophical and liturgical texts, and also a need to regard his or her teacher as an embodiment of the teachings—as a model. These two parallel processes pervade the history of Tibetan Buddhism(s), but they can be said to be particularly intense at three historical moments: the two waves of transmission mentioned above, and during Tibetan exile, generally dated as beginning in 1959 after the Lhasa Uprising.1 Whereas the first two waves of transmission and translation had India as a source and Tibet as a target, the third wave reverses such a pattern: Tibet becomes the missing source and a vaguely defined “West” becomes the target. This last wave, motivated by the threat posed by the Chinese takeover to the Tibetan religious and political elites, presents us with a new process of translation, substantially different from the two previous ones. In this case the target culture did not go out looking for the Buddhist teachings in a given source culture: rather, the source culture approached the target because of a political accident. This is not to say that there was no interest in the target culture, but simply to highlight that the transmission of the Tibetan schools to the West happened in the context of Tibetans fleeing their land for reasons other than transmitting the Buddhist teachings. The fact that many highly learned and accomplished Tibetan teachers fled Tibet and settled in Western countries further complicates seeing Tibet as the geographical embodiment of the source language and culture. As explained above, the most common pattern in Buddhist translations and transmissions is that the target culture journeys towards the source one, which is located in a somewhat stable physical abode. Even though the position of exiled Tibetan Buddhist teachers as the source language and culture in this process of transmission seems unquestionable, the various representatives of Western target cultures did not have to journey 2 Although Tibetans started fleeing their homes much earlier in the 1950s—as soon as the PLA started taking over Tibetan-speaking areas in the early 1950s—the Lhasa Uprising is generally considered a landmark since it caused the flight of the Tibetan government headed by the Dalai Lama. A detailed account and analysis of these events can be found in Shakya 1999. 113 The IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship Volume 2 - Issue 1 - Spring 2013 to Tibet to receive the teachings, nor, often, did they even have to learn Tibetan. This unusual social context signalled by dislocation has enabled the emergence of a new kind of translator that responds to the needs of the new situation. A good example of this new type of teacher-translator was Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-1987), who was instrumental to the transmission of the Tibetan Tantric tradition to the West, particularly to the English-speaking West.